By Ashley Portero: Subscribe to Ashley's RSS feed
August 25, 2011 6:47 PM EDT
Only weeks after fighting tooth-and-nail against the federal debt ceiling increase and deriding even a hint of tax increases, Republicans are now advocating a new way the nation can boost its revenue: make the poor and middle class pay more.
The group that models itself as the anti-tax party apparently believes the country's bottom 50 percent - who only control about 2.5 percent of its wealth - are the people who need to contribute more to society, instead of their higher-earning counterparts.
The Bush tax cuts - which decreased employees' payroll tax from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent in 2011 - were extended for two years last December, a deal that was concocted between Democrats and Republicans in order to secure the passage of the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance and Reauthorization and Job Creation Act of 2010. The deal temporarily lowered employees' payroll tax from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent in order to aid the working poor, senior citizens and other low-income Americans.
Because payroll taxes only apply to the first $106,800 of earned income per year, the more an individual makes over the cap, the less of an impact he or she will feel from a change in the tax rate. Based on the Internal Revenue Service's 2010 database, the bottom 50 percent of American earners raked in, on average, less than $33,048. That means they have a lot more to lose if payroll taxes are raised than the top the top 1 percent - who earned an average of $380,354 - and even the top 10 percent, who made a median of $113,799.
While Republicans have opposed repealing oil and gas subsidies, capital gains on millionaires' income and a tax loophole for corporate jet owners, raising taxes in a weak economy - for the nation's poorest demographic, of course - is being championed by the GOP's notable figures.
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In an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Sunday, Republican presidential hopeful John Huntsman told the newspaper that the half of Americans who are no longer paying an income tax - primarily working poor families and senior citizens - should be taxed more. Huntsman credited Sen. Marco Rubio - a Tea Party favorite - for having the insight that, "we don't have enough people paying taxes in this country."
Gov. Rick Perry and Rep. Michelle Bachmann have also gone on record supporting a take hike for the poor, with Perry going so far as to say that it's an "injustice" that so many Americans don't pay an income tax.
Here's the thing - the percentage of Americans that pay no income tax never rose above 30 percent before the Bush tax cuts. The cuts pushed the number slightly over 30 percent; after the peak of the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009, that figure grew again, eventually reaching almost 47 percent in 2011, according to data from the Tax Policy Center.
Many Republicans, of course, ignore the reason why a majority of those people do not pay an income tax - they are too poor. Many of those people do not make enough money to qualify for even the lowest tax bracket - which, for a married couple, is $16,750.
Yes, the wealthy pay a majority of the income taxes in this country - in fact, the top 1 percent of income earners pay about 40 percent of all income taxes. They also control about 40 percent of the nation's wealth. Do you think they would want to pay an income tax - or even a higher payroll tax - if they made less than $20,000 a year? I didn't either.
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